Pumpkin cookies with cream cheese icing

Any one who knows me, knows of my love for all food that is seasonal, especially fall/Autumn food! I made pumpkin muffins earlier in the week and had massive quantities of pumpkin left over so I went on a hunt for a recipe for pumpkin cookies. I came across a recipe similar to this but changed it slightly to suit my taste with more spice and cream cheese icing on top! These little gems are moist and hard to resist!

ENJOY!

Pumpkin cookies with cream cheese icing

• 2 cups (260 grams) plain flour
• 1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 large eggs1
• 1/4 cups (260 grams) brown sugar
• 1/2 cup (120 ml) canola oil or vegetable oil
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1 cup (215 grams) canned (or fresh) pumpkin puree
• 1 cup chopped pecans

Cream Cheese Frosting:

• 4 ounces (115 grams) room temperature cream cheese
• 2 tablespoons (25 grams) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1/2 cup (55 grams) confectioners (or icing) sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/4 cup pecans, of finely chopped
• 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
  

For Cookies: Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C) and place oven rack in the center of the oven. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
In a large bowl, sift or whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, ground cinnamon, ground ginger, ground cloves, and salt.
In the bowl of your electric mixer, or with a hand mixer, beat the eggs and sugar until light and smooth (about 2 minutes). Beat in the oil, vanilla extract, and pumpkin puree. Add the flour mixture and pecans and beat just until incorporated. With a spoon, place small mounds of batter onto the prepared baking sheet, spacing about 2 inches (5 cm) apart.
Bake for about 15 - 18 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center of a cookie comes out clean. Remove from oven and transfer to a wire rack to cool completely before frosting.
Frosting: Beat the cream cheese and butter until soft and creamy. Beat in the confectioners' sugar and vanilla until the frosting is soft and creamy. Put a small spoonful of icing on top of each cookie using the back of a spoon to spread. Sprinkle a few chopped pecans on top of each cookie and a pinch of cinnamon to finish!

Melting moments with lemon buttercream

These tasty little things are just something I whipped up yesterday afternoon. There are two really cool things about these cookies. 1) there is only 5 ingredients in the recipe, and 2) they really do "melt" in your mouth! If you have not tried these tasty little things before, you need to!
ENJOY!

Lemon melting moments

• 250 g (1 stick)butter, softened
• 1/3 cup icing sugar
• 1 ½ cup flour
• ½ cup corn flour
• 60g (1/4 cup) butter, softened
• ½ cup icing sugar
• 1 teaspoon grated lemon rind
• 3 teaspoons lemon juice

Preheat oven to 150 C. (300 F)
Cream butter and sugar until lightly fluffy.
Sift flour and corn flour in to creamed butter mixture.
Mix until well combined.
Put mixture in a bowl and cover with plastic wrap, refrigerate for at least one hour.
On a cookie sheet, form small balls, about the size of a quarter, then lightly flatten just the tops with a fork. Make sure they are at least an inch apart.
Bake for 20 mins and cool on a rack.
Make cream filling. In a mixing bowl, combine butter, icing sugar, lemon juice and rind and beat until fluffy.
Put a small amount of butter cream between 2 cookies and sandwich together.

Pumpkin muffins with cream cheese filling

There are many things that I still, even after living overseas for 10 years, miss from home. One thing being the change of seasons. My favourite season is Fall/Autumn. I love it for many reasons, leaves and trees change to beautiful shades of red, orange and yellow; there's a crispness in the air that calls for warm fuzzy socks and big mugs of tea; it is also means, in America, that the holiday season is near. The holidays mean family, fun and food! This is the time when some of my favourite flavours are prominent on most Americans tables, gingerbread, hot apple cider with cinnamon, roast turkey with stuffing and pumpkin pie! So why then is it on the verge of April and I am baking these fall foods? I now live in the southern hemisphere and we are at the end of Summer. Here in Queensland, Australia, it's quite tropical and we really don't ever get a winter like I grew up with in Washington state, but there is definitely a fall and we are nearly there! So I thought I would kick off fall, which starts next week,with one of my favourite recipes, these yummy pumpkin muffins with cream cheese filling and a pecan streusel on top! FUN FACT: Australian's don't eat pumpkin pie and you can not get pumpkin in a can. This suits me fine as one of my goals is to only post recipes on my blog that are made from scratch. (but if you have access to canned pureed pumpkin, by all means use it.)

ENJOY!

Pumpkin Cheesecake Muffins

• 3 cups flour
• 4 teaspoons cinnamon
• 2 teaspoons nutmeg
• 1 ½ teaspoons ground cloves
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 4 eggs
• 1 ¼ cups vegetable oil
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 cups pumpkin puree
• 4 ounces (100g) cream cheese, softened
• 4 ounces (100g) marscapone cheese, softened
• ½ cup powdered (icing) sugar
• ½ cup brown sugar
• ½ cup flour
• 4 tablespoons cold butter, cubed
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1/2 cup finely chopped pecans
  

First, prepare the filling: Combine the cream cheese, marscapone cheese, and powdered sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer until smooth. Form into a log on plastic wrap or foil, making sure that the diameter is small enough to fit into the well of a muffin pan. Wrap the log up tightly and freeze for at least one hour.
Preheat the oven to 350° F (175°C). Line muffin pans with paper liners for 24 muffins.
To make the muffins: combine the flour, spices, salt and baking soda in a medium bowl. Whisk together and set aside. In the bowl of your electric mixer, combine the eggs, the oil, the sugar and the pumpkin. Beat until well combined. Add the dry ingredients and mix on low speed until just the flour is moistened.
To make the streusel topping: combine all ingredients in a small bowl. Mix together with a pastry blender or your fingers until crumbly.
Next: fill each muffin cup halfway with batter. Remove the cheesecake log from the freezer and slice into 24 pieces. Place a slice in each muffin well. Divide the remaining muffin batter evenly among the muffin cups, covering up the cheesecake pieces. Sprinkle the streusel topping over the top of each muffin. Bake for 20-25 minutes. Cool completely on racks before serving.

Dulce de leche cheesecake squares

I posted a poll last week to let you choose what my next blog project would be. There were 4 different options and these Dulce de leche cheesecake squares won by a landslide! (I was secretly hoping that this one would win!)

Last Sunday was a great day: I fell in love with my new favourite thing, dulce de leche, meaning "milk caramel" in Spanish. I also discovered that after years of wishing they made or sold graham crackers here in Australia, THEY DO! They are just sold under a different, horrible name, (digestive biscuits) and are round rather than square! I have been making cheesecake all these years with alternative crusts because I couldn't get graham crackers. I also got to spend some quality time with my good friend, Lisa, even though she is 3425km away in Darwin! Skype is a wonderful thing! I sent her the ingredients list the day before and we made a "baking date" for Sunday morning. I talked her through the recipe and we made it together in different cities. So much fun, I'm sure we will be doing it again soon!

For those of you are unaware of the wonderfulness that is dulce de leche, I am sorry! Do not be scared away by the funny foreign name. It is simply a really thick caramel made of cooked sugar and milk. Mmmm... is your mouth watering yet? It takes a little while to make, but is well worth it! There are different techniques for making it, but I found this method to least intimidating, as the alternative was to boil milk in an unopened can. SCARY, I know! The result is a versatile product that you can use in all sorts of deserts, and I suspect if I were not so lactose intolerant, I would eat it on anything and everything!!! Oh, mental note **try over ice cream!**

So if any of my friends or family (most of which are overseas) would like to have a Skype baking day, let me know!

Enjoy!

Dulce de leche cheesecake squares

Ingredients

• 1 cup graham crackers (or digestive biscuits in Australia,) crushed


• 3 Tablespoons sugar


• 3 Tablespoons butter, melted


• 1 teaspoon unflavored gelatin


• 1/4 cup whole milk


• 8 oz (225g)cream cheese, softened


• 2 large eggs


• pinch of teaspoon salt


• 1 cup dulce de leche (recipe follows)


• 1 cup dark bittersweet or dark chocolate, coarsely chopped


• 1/4 cup whole milk or cream

To make dulce de leche: Pour one can (14 ounce) sweetened condensed milk into top of double-boiler (a pot with a larger, heat proof bowl over it.) Boil water in pot. Once at boiling, reduce to medium heat. Cover bowl, stirring occasionally. This should take for 40 to 50 minutes, although I did a double batch and it took more like an hour and a half. You will know it's done when it becomes thick and light caramel colour.

Crust: Preheat oven to 325°F (165°C.) Line bottom and sides of an 8-inch square baking pan with 2 sheets of foil (crisscrossed), leaving a 2-inch overhang on all sides.
Finely grind crackers with sugar and a pinch of salt in a food processor. With motor running, add butter, blending until combined. Press mixture evenly onto bottom of baking pan. Bake 10 minutes, then cool in pan on a rack 5 minutes.

Filling: Sprinkle gelatin over milk in a small bowl and let stand 2 minutes to soften. Beat together cream cheese, eggs, salt, and gelatin mixture in a bowl with an electric mixer at medium speed until well combined, about 2 minutes, then stir in dulce de leche gently but thoroughly. Pour filling over crust, smoothing top. Bake in oven until center is just set, about 40-45 minutes. Cool cheesecake completely in pan on rack, about 2 hours. Chill for at least 4 hours.

Ganache: Heat milk in a small saucepan to just to the boil and remove immediately. Add chocolate and let sit for 2 min. Stir with a wisk until all lumps are gone, then pour over cheesecake tilting the cheesecake to cover evenly. Refrigerate for 1 hour. Lift cheesecake from pan using foil overhang and cut into 1-inch squares.

Lemon bars

When life gives you lemons... (for $1.99 a bag at the market) make lemon bars! This is one of my favourite deserts! I love lemon anything and the tarter the better! I've actually tweaked this recipe slightly from the original version so that they are a bit more tart.


ENJOY!

Ingredients

• 1 cup butter, softened
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 6 eggs
• 1 1/2 cups white sugar
• 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 cup squeezed lemon juice
• Zest of ½ lemon (optional)
  

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2. In a medium bowl, blend together softened butter, 2 cups flour and 1/2 cup sugar. Press into the bottom of an ungreased 9x13 inch pan.
3. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes in the preheated oven, or until firm and golden.
4. In another bowl, whisk together the remaining 1 1/2 cups sugar and 1/4 cup flour. Whisk in the eggs, lemon juice and zest. Pour over the baked crust.
5. Bake for an additional 20 minutes in the preheated oven. The bars will firm up as they cool.

Grasshopper slice

"What is a Grasshopper slice" I hear you ask? Well, for me it was something I had always known growing up, chocolate and mint, usually in a cookie. Apparently here in Australia it's not a term they use. So thinking I would have some fun with it, I told my 10 year old nephew, with a very straight face, "you can barely taste the grasshoppers, the chocolate masks the bug taste." I could see him out of the corner of my eye watching me, waiting for me to crack a smile and tell him I was kidding, but I held it in. I tried this the next day too when I took the slices to work, but apparently they are not as gullible!
I originally found a recipe for grasshopper brownies, but can not really call them that due to a mistake I made while putting these together. The base is much more dense than a brownie, but I think it tasted great and is a nice contrast against the creamy mint ganache, so I have altered the recipe slightly.

ENJOY!

Grasshopper Slice

For brownie layer

• 1 cup unsalted butter
• 2 cups dark chocolate finely chopped
• 1 1/2 cups packed brown sugar
• 3 large eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
  

For mint ganache

• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 3 cups white chocolate, chopped
• 2 tablespoons crème de menthe or peppermint flavour
• 1 or 2 drops of green food colouring

For chocolate ganache

• 1/4 cup heavy cream
• 2 cups dark chocolate, chopped

Make brownie layer: Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 375°F (190°C). Lightly butter a 13- by 9-inch baking pan and line with 2 crisscrossed sheets of foil, leaving a 2 inch overhang on all sides. Butter foil.
Melt butter and chocolate with brown sugar in a 3-quart heavy saucepan over moderate heat, stirring occasionally, until smooth. Remove from heat. Whisk in eggs and vanilla until combined. Whisk in flour, cocoa, and salt until just combined.
Spread batter evenly in baking pan and bake until set and a wooden pick inserted in center comes out with moist crumbs adhering, about 20 minutes. Cool completely in pan on a rack, about 1 1/2 hours.
Make mint ganache:Bring cream to a simmer in a 2- to 3-quart saucepan and remove from heat. Pour over white chocolate in a bowl. Let stand 1 minute, then whisk until smooth. Stir in mint flavour and colouring and chill, covered, stirring occasionally, until thick, about 1 hour.
Make chocolate ganache: Bring cream to a simmer in a 2- to 3-quart saucepan and remove from heat. Pour over bittersweet chocolate in a bowl. Let stand 1 minute, then whisk until smooth. Chill, covered, stirring occasionally, until thick, about 30 minutes.
Assemble layers: Spread mint ganache over top of cooled brownie in a thin even layer using offset spatula, then chill until firm but still slightly sticky, about 30 minutes.
Spread chocolate ganache over mint and chill until firm, about 2 hours.

Note: You will want to note that these can take up to 4 hours to make because you have to wait for each layer to cool before adding the next, but it's well worth it!

Peanut Butter Brownies

As an American living overseas in Australia, it boggles my mind why Australians do not get the whole peanut butter/chocolate thing! I am making it my mission to spread the peanut buttery-chocolaty goodness to Australians!

I came across this recipe online recently and made a mental note to make it at first opportunity. It is a VERY large batch, so if you make it, be prepared to share! My husband took a plate to work today and judging by the empty plate that came home with him, I think they were a success.

I do feel that the recipe calls for a bit too much ganache on top and next time I make these, I will half the ganache.

ENJOY!





For brownies

• 2 sticks unsalted butter softened
• 1 3/4 cups sugar
• 1 cup creamy peanut butter
• 2 large eggs plus 1 large yolk
• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 cups semisweet chocolate chips (9 ounces)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

For ganache

• 1 1/2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 1 tablespoon unsalted butter, softened

Make brownies: Preheat oven to 350 F (180 C) with rack in middle. Butter a 9 x 13, 2 inch baking pan, then line bottom of pan with baking paper. Beat butter and sugar with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until mixture is light and fluffy, then add peanut butter and beat until incorporated. Beat in whole eggs, egg yolk, vanilla and salt. Reduce mixer sped to low, then mix in flour until just combined.
Mix in chocolate chips (1 1/2 cups) then spread batter in baking pan, smoothing top. Bake until brownies are deep golden, puffed on top and a wooden pick inserted in center come out with some crumbs adhering, 40 to 45 minutes.
Cool completely in pan on a rack, about 1 1/2 hours.

Make ganache: Put chocolate chips (1 1/2 cups) in a heatproof bowl.
Bring cream to a boil in a small saucepan, then pour over chocolate chips and let mixture stand for one minute.
Gently whisk in butter until it is incorporated, chocolate is melted, and a smooth mixture forms.
Spread ganache on cooled brownies and let stand until set, about 15 minutes.

Butter Pecan Oatmeal Cookies

This is my very first ever blog entry. It's more of a test than anything, but I figured I might as well share a tasty recipe while I'm at it. Enjoy!

Butter Pecan Oatmeal Cookies

Ingredients
3/4 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups rolled oats
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup chopped pecans, 1/2 cup whole pecans to go on top of cookies
2 cups chopped toffee bits

Directions
Preheat oven to 300 degrees F (150 degrees C). Line cookie sheets with baking paper.
In a bowl, cream together the butter and brown sugar. Stir in the egg and vanilla until smooth. Add flour, salt and baking soda, stir into the creamed mixture. Then stir in oats. Finally, stir in the chopped toffee pieces and chopped pecans.
With a spoon, create small round balls and drop onto the prepared cookie sheets, and flatten slightly. Press a whole pecan in to the top of each cookie. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes in the preheated oven until golden brown.